


"Moonlight Serenade"

by RembrandtsWife



Series: On Vinyl [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bisexual Steve Rogers, Character Study, Gen, Implied Relationships, Inspired by Music, Nostalgia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-13
Updated: 2014-05-13
Packaged: 2018-01-24 15:42:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1610462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/RembrandtsWife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve is often nostalgic for the old days, but he's also, in spite of everything, hopeful for the future. Even if he doesn't really know what he wants.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Moonlight Serenade"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kryptaria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/gifts).



> Can I just say this is Kryptaria's fault, AGAIN? If it weren't for her, I might not have gone to see The Winter Soldier this past weekend, after following all her Captain America posts on Tumblr and *thinking about* Steve Rogers. But she gave it a quick read for me, so I can't bitch too much. *g*
> 
> I'm gifting this fic to her, but I think it is actually for my dad, who listened to the big bands and other jazz, and was in Burma in World War II, and from whom I borrowed Bucky's complaint.

"Vinyl is back," Tony had said. "Very cool, very audiophile."

Vinyl had never left, as far as Steve was concerned. He had a smartphone, of course, a gift from Tony, and he did use it, not just for phone calls, but to read e-books and check his email and listen to music recommended by friends (and there was so much, so much, he'd never catch up).

But when he sat down and put up his feet in his very uncool recliner, he wanted a vinyl record on the stereo, a print book in his hands, and a cup of coffee from the percolator. Natasha, who was fond of thrift shops and junk shops and antique shops, had found him the percolator and presented it to him with a can of Chock Full o' Nuts. Tony had built the stereo, of course. And the record on the turntable was the Glenn Miller Band, playing their greatest hits.

Steve had a lot of reading to catch up on, too, but tonight he couldn't concentrate. He finished his cup of coffee, poured another, and then realized he'd had two cups of coffee without turning more than two or three pages. So he put down Steven King's massive novel about the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, shrugged into his cap and jacket, and walked out into the night, leaving the record spinning behind him.

It was a warm night, too warm for the cap and jacket, really, but he needed the camouflage. The cap shielded his face some; the jacket blurred the silhouette of muscles. He could be any old veteran, almost, an old veteran in the body of a young soldier. He could walk wherever he wanted, like you used to in the old days, when people weren't so afraid of going out at night.

It was good to be back in the old neighborhood. In New York, in Manhattan, in the boroughs, too, there were more people out at night, fewer assumptions that people on the street had a bad reason to be there. His neighborhood in D.C. had been handy for S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, but too clean, too quiet, too still at night. What was the word? Gentrified. Too gentrified.

Not that Brooklyn wasn't gentrified, too, but there was still some feel and smell of the Brooklyn Steve remembered. The night life, the kids playing on the street, the mix of cultures and colors and languages. His parents were immigrants; he was Captain America. Maybe one of those kids from a country that hadn't even been on a map when he was in school--Laos, Burkina Faso--would be an American hero someday.

Steve still hoped things like that, even as they looked less and less likely. He walked past a couple of teenage boys necking and hoped that they would be able to get married with no problems if they wanted to. Or not get married, if they wanted to. He hoped that Hillary Clinton would get a fair chance to be President and that he might live to see a President who was both black and a woman. (He still had to check himself sometimes and not say "Negroes". It was black, or African-American.) He hoped the homeless people he saw and regularly gave money to got housing and medical care, and mental health care, too. They might not have called it "PTSD" in his day, but he still knew it when he saw it.

He had to try not to walk too fast. His body's idea of a relaxed walk was about march tempo; as for being in a *hurry*, well. He tried to stroll through the warm summer night and listen to the sounds. Most of what he heard was traffic, sirens, and the hum of air conditioners. Steve didn't like air conditioners. They made him feel cold. He could tolerate naturally cold temperatures extremely well, but the steady directionless flow of air conditioning raised gooseflesh on his arms, turned his toes to ice cubes. He never used the central air for cooling, preferring window fans. One of his neighbors, an elderly gay man, had actually lectured him about how he was in danger of heat stroke and he should close those windows, young man, and put on the a/c like God intended! Steve had nodded politely even though he knew the man was at least twenty years younger than him.

He'd gone where his feet led and listened to his thoughts and the noises and the rhythm of his not-too-quick feet, and suddenly he was back outside his own building. The sound of "Moonlight Serenade" was pouring out of his open window on the fourth floor, and Steve stopped there on the sidewalk, remembering. He remembered the dance halls and the crowded dance floors where he'd watched Bucky dance with girl after girl, while he stood against the wall. He remembered how Bucky had complained that he could either pay for a girl's admission and not buy her a drink, or sneak her into the dance and have enough money to buy her a cocktail, but not both. He remembered never being quite sure whether he wanted to be out there holding a girl in his arms, a girl who wanted to be there and hadn't been deputized by Bucky, or whether he wanted Bucky to be holding him. 

When it came to the War, Steve Rogers had known what he wanted to do, what he had to do, and he had fought like hell for the chance to do it. When it came to boys and girls, men and women, and what he wanted when he was out on the dance floor, he had never quite known for sure. And still didn't.

The music stopped, and he heard, even four floors down, the faint scratch of the needle hitting the label and lifting away, leaving silence. Steve slipped into the quiet building and climbed the stairs to his place, as slowly as he could manage.


End file.
